Third Floor Common Room, Thursday Evening

[spin_kick_snap]

So, Kathy's grand plan to go trick-or-treating in the dorms to meet people had kind of been a bust, but an important discovery had been made nevertheless: Theo had never seen Mister What.

Not a single episode. Hadn't even heard of the show. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary, even!

The very idea was shocking, but Kathy was there to make it right. She couldn't let her favorite wallflower buddy continue to wallow in cultural ignorance forever! So, she'd hooked up her laptop to the TV in the third floor common room, where she had every episode from the new run (and a bunch of the old) torrented TOTALLY LEGALLY OBTAINED on her external hard drive.

The amount of food she'd gotten from the Chinese place in town was ridiculous, but the delivery guy hadn't seemed too fussed about it and the price was about what she'd figured, so she just shrugged and hauled it up, spreading it on the counter. Hopefully the smell of General Tso's Chicken and the distinctive noise of Mister What's time and space machine would lure other people to coming around, too.

[For one, but totally open! Food and episodes completely moddable]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

...Was there a polite way to ask someone if they were raised in a cult? Because all of Evan's talk of 'a perfect world' that was 'too good to be true' made it sound a lot like he'd been raised in a cult.

"I'm really sorry to hear that," she said, because that, at least, was both honest and polite. "Kids are horrible and if you're not prepared for it..." She shook her head. Even going to school with a heavy Korean population didn't mean that Kathy had escaped causal racism and bullying, too.

"I take it you were really isolated before then?"

You know, in your weird cult with no TV or contact with the outside world?

[genesishero]

"I didn't think I was," Evan replied, poking at his cashew chicken awkwardly with his fork. "I went to school and baseball games, and my uncle visited all the time. I was kept pretty busy."

Besides, the cult thing came before he was cloned from the little resurrected Apocalypse boy.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Wait, you went to baseball games and never heard anything like that."

Yep. Totally raised in some kind of cult. Or something weirder, like Wee'uns of the Wheat.

"Spectators at sports games are, like, the worst people in the world. The adrenaline from the game gets into their brain with no other way to get it out than by being terrible to one another."

[genesishero]

"Really?" Evan was kind of looking at Kathy with big, confused eyes now. "I mean, I understand when you like a team less than the other one, but I thought that just meant you cheered for your own team even harder."

... There were some things that Evan was still kind of picking up on, here.

"Man, he even got baseball wrong," he muttered, mostly to himself, as he poked at his chicken some more with his fork.

[spin_kick_snap]

Okay, yeah. Totally a kid who'd gotten free of a cult.

"At least you understand the way things are now?"

Wait, that wasn't comforting at all, considering the way the real world worked involved racism, prejudice, and a million of painful -isms.

"I mean, it sucks, but dealing with a painful truth instead of a comforting lie is..."

Well, all the books and everything said it was supposed to be better, but Kathy was pretty sure that the comforting lie was only terrible if you knew it was a lie. Otherwise, the comforting lie was probably pretty awesome all the way around.

"...I'm sorry."

[genesishero]

"It's... fine," Evan murmured with a little shrug of his shoulders. "It's life now, I mean. Even if I could ever go back, I'd still know better, and none of it would feel right."

He sighed and shook his head.

"Anyhow, here's not all bad. It just... takes some getting used to."

That was maybe the nice way of putting it.

[spin_kick_snap]

"That's for damn sure," Kathy said. Because, yeah, the real world. She could only imagine what a shock to his system the change must have been. "But there are some benefits. Like getting to know who you really are. And Chinese food. And Mister What."

She was trying?

[genesishero]

Who Evan really was... wasn't really something he had ever wanted to learn. But he could appreciate that she was trying.

"Well, I haven't seen much What yet, and I'm reserving judgement on the Chinese food until after I actually get some into my mouth," Evan replied, attempting a smile. "But I have a puppy here, and a girlfriend. And I get to work in a library and a bookstore, so... that stuff is all pretty neat."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Here," Kathy said, offering Evan a crab rangoon. "Let me be the one to introduce you to the tasty deliciousness that is Chinese food then. The What might take a while longer for you to realize that it's awesome."